Empathy versus apathy in motivational decision making of University teachers

Abstract

Process, which the good university can become the great university in, is based especially on the enthusiastic, passionate,
empathetic, and charged with energy teachers and scholars. However, the decisions and motivation of teachers are not
always straightforward and simple at present. Teachers and scholars are increasingly faced with the professional burnout
syndrome which often leads to drop their passion and belief in the usefulness and general importance of education. The
study therefore pays attention on the topic of conflict between necessity/will of a university teacher to be empathetic
towards students (which is indeed very mentally challenging) and/versus the desire to maintain a sufficient of vanishing
working energy and reduce teacher empathy towards others (especially students). This means, it consists in theme of
realizing and handling meaningfully a conflict between the scholar or academic empathy and apathy. This is probably the one
of the toughest long-term decision-making problems/processes faced by teachers in existing universities (namely in Central
Europe countries). Using the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization, the study in theoretical part
focuses on the empathy and apathy definition; when defining these terms, the viewpoint of teacher’s effective decision
making is preferred. This part presents several views on the advantages as well the pitfalls of empathy application on the
teacher’s side. In the empirical-analytic parts, when presenting survey results on the characteristics of great university,
techniques of descriptive statistics are used. Survey was performed on the sample of 150 students of University of Žilina
(Slovak Republic). Students have answered to questions related to the application of individual approach to them that is one
of the most significant features of empathy utilization. Difference between the importance of individual approach towards
the students and/versus really felt, that the individual approach is applied towards them, underlines the importance of
empathy. Conclusion of the study defines the relationship between teacher and students as a multidimensional, dynamic and
accelerating relationship that contains in itself and addresses these dimensions: psychological-personality, developmentalcultivation, cognitive-mental, communicational-argumentation, and motivational-acceleration.
Keywords: Perfect university, teachers, students, empathy, apathy, decision making, survey.